1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to computer related information search and retrieval, and specifically to streaming media search tools and methods.
2. Prior Art
Searching for content in actively streaming multimedia data streams, such as digital audio or video streams, is becoming increasingly difficult due to both technical and legal trends. While the computers receiving these multimedia streams have benefited from recent improvements in available network bandwidth, the demand for higher quality streams has in parallel raised the bandwidth requirements consumed by each stream connection. In addition, recent US copyright law changes prohibit the early availability of stream content information, or metadata, prior to the content segment transmission, rendering existing search approaches ineffective and costly.
Many multimedia data stream formats, such as the Shoutcast, Icecast, and Windows Media streaming formats, include provisions for periodically transmitting metadata information embedded in the stream itself by interleaving the metadata with the audio or video data. When a receiver computer connects to a stream, the receiver computer is able to decode the metadata, when it is inserted into the multimedia data stream, to display the content metadata, for example artist and title, to the receiver computer user.
Recent changes to the United States (US) Copyright Act restrict broadcasters of digital audio recording type multimedia streams from transmitting individual recording or track title and artist metadata prior to the start of the broadcast. For example, the title and artist information for a song track may not be made available by the broadcaster prior to time where the track audio data is transmitted in the continuous multimedia stream. This constraint on streaming multimedia broadcasts renders existing multimedia search techniques ineffective in finding desired content quickly enough for a user to hear or see the majority of a streaming multimedia selection. These prior search methods are particularly ineffective in the case of popular audio song tracks which average only three to four minutes in total duration. Other prior search techniques which rely upon advance information transmitted either within the multimedia stream or through a separate means, for example an electronic program guide are not possible for broadcasters who must abide by the new US Copyright Act provisions.
Another category of conventional multimedia search techniques is labeled as useful for streaming multimedia, but these techniques are designed for on-demand streaming of archived multimedia files, where the user does not experience the content until the search has been completed and the user or the user's computer signals to the host computer to commence streaming the desired multimedia content.
Users who wish to selectively enjoy specific live multimedia content from the wide range of sites abiding by the new US copyright laws described above, often manually connect to a multimedia stream server and wait for their receiver computer to decode the content metadata, which is displayed to the user, who then decides whether to continue to receive this stream or to connect to a different stream. Since the metadata is only periodically interleaved with the audio data in the streams, sometimes only at the beginning of a track, the delay between stream connection and metadata display can be up to several minutes. This current approach also consumes one of the limited number of streaming server connections for each alternative station which a user would like to monitor for preferred content, thereby possibly blocking another potential user who desires to connect to one of the monitored multimedia stream sources. This approach also requires the broadcaster to invest in increased streaming server capacity and bandwidth to support the additional parallel stream connections required by this search method. In addition, stream connections to acquire metadata, even if brief, may have sufficient duration to be deemed a performance under US copyright Act, which increases the broadcaster's royalty obligation. The current definition of performance for calculation of broadcaster royalty is each instance in which any portion of a sound recording is transmitted to a listener.